“A little bridging is required here,” said the captain.  “We’ll have it done to-morrow night.  The break is no disadvantage if they attack; in fact, we’d rather like to have them try for it.  But it makes movement along the line difficult by day.”

When we were across and once more behind the breastworks, he called my attention to some high ground in the rear.

“One of our officers took a short cut across there in daylight,” he said.  “He was quite exposed, and they drew a bead on him from the German trench and got him through the arm.  Not a serious hit.  It wasn’t cricket for anyone to go out to bring him in.  He realized this, and called out to leave him to himself, and crawled to cover.”

I was getting the commonplaces of trench life.  Thus far it had been a quiet night and was to remain so.  Reddish, flickering swaths of light were thrown across the fields between the trenches by the enemy’s Roman candle flares.  One tried to estimate how many flares the Germans must use every night from Switzerland to the North Sea.

On our side, the only light was from our braziers.  Thomas Atkins has become a patron of braziers made by punching holes in buckets; and so have the Germans.  Punch holes in a bucket, start a fire inside, and you have cheer and warmth and light through the long night vigils.  Two or three days before we had located a sniper between the lines by seeing him swing his fire-pot to make a draught against the embers.

If you have ever sat around a camp-fire in the forest or on the plains you need be told nothing further.  One of the old, glamorous features of war survives in these glowing braziers, spreading their genial rays among the little houses and lighting the faces of the men who stand or squat in encircling groups around the coals, which dry wet clothes, slake the moisture of a section of earth, make the bayonets against the walls glisten, and reveal the position of a machine-gun with its tape ready for firing.

Values are relative, and a brazier in the trenches makes the satisfaction of a steam-heated room in winter very superficial and artificial.  You are at home there with Tommy Atkins, regular of an old line English regiment, in his heavy khaki overcoat and solid boots and wool puttees, a sturdy, hardened man of a terrific war.  He, the regular, the shilling-a-day policeman of the empire, was still doing the fighting at the front.  The new army, which embraces all classes, was not yet in action.

This man and that one were at Mons. This one and that one had been through the whole campaign without once seeing Mother England for whom they were fighting.  The affection in which Captain P------was held extended through his regiment, for we had left his own company behind.  At every turn he was asked about his arm.

“You’ve made a mistake, sir.  This isn’t a hospital,” as one man expressed it.  Oh, but the captain was bored with hearing about that arm!  If he is wounded again I am sure that he will try to keep the fact a secret.